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DorothyFields

Dorothy Fields wrote songs for a wide variety of musicals that became dearly loved classics of American culture, from “Hey Big Spender” to “A Fine Romance” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” which won an Academy Award in 1936. The daughter of Lew Fields, half of the famed Weber and Fields vaudeville act, Fields joined the family business after high school, penning songs for Cotton Club acts. She wrote the lyrics for songs in more than twenty-five films and theatrical productions, including Sweet Charity, Annie Get Your Gun, Swing Time, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, both alone and with collaborators that included her brother Howard and musical legends Irving Berlin, Cy Coleman, and Jerome Kern. In 1971, when the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame held its first annual nominations, Dorothy Fields was the only woman named to the ballot.